Recently, the term “shoe speculation” has become a hot word on social platforms such as Weibo, and this time the target is domestic products such as Li Ning and Anta.
1 “Shoe prices” soared 31 times
According to netizens in many places, on April 3 On the first day of the Qingming Festival holiday, offline stores of domestic brands such as Li Ning and Anta had a large flow of people and even had to queue up to enter.
Recently on social media, domestic sneakers have attracted attention due to price increases and shortages. news.
Some netizens complained, “If you want to buy a pair of shoes, they are either out of stock or out of stock.”
A netizen showed an Anta Doraemon co-branded shoe. The sale price was 499 yuan. It is now 3,699 yuan, an increase of more than 3,000 yuan.
Another netizen showed the Li Ning Counterflow glass series sneakers, which cost 469 yuan when he placed the order. After purchasing, he saw that the price had risen to 699. He complained, “Maybe I should speculate. shoe”.
What’s even more exaggerated is that with Li Ning Wade’s way 4 All-star silver and white models are taken as an example. The page shows that there are only 42 digits. It will arrive within 6 days after payment, and the price is as high as 48,889 yuan. The reference sale price of the shoe is only 1,499 yuan, an increase of 31 times! However, there is no recent purchase record on the page, and it seems to be “priced but not available”.
Another example is Li Ning Wade’s Way 7 wow7 The Moment, which goes beyond the limited edition. The price of 40 sizes is 10,889 yuan, which is nearly 6.4 times higher than the launch price of 1,699 yuan. At the same time, there are 271 recent purchase data for this shoe. As of press time, a size 44 shoe had just been sold 4 hours ago, with a transaction price of 8,989 yuan.
As can be seen from the transaction records of the above-mentioned Anta Doraemon co-branded shoes, the price of size 42.5 is 4599 yuan, which is higher than the reference price for sale. 8 times more. There are nearly 9,000 recent purchase records for this shoe.
Shoe dealers are rushing towards domestic brands, some are happy and some are worried.
According to reports, a person who has been in the sneaker industry for many years said that the market conditions during this period were very “magical.” In his circle of friends, colleagues who make domestic products are constantly asking “asking for supply and getting them at a higher price”. A colleague bought more than 100,000 yuan of goods in one go and earned back the money for a car.
Another boss in the sneaker business mainly sells Nike, Adidas and other brand sneakers. When the business is at its best, annual sales can exceed 100 million yuan. However, the recent sudden news has caused store visits and sales to plummet, and tens of millions of yuan of inventory are piled in the warehouse. The prices of goods are constantly falling, and it is conservatively expected to lose at least several million this time.
Sneaker reselling has been a viable business for decades. The initial demand can be traced back to 1985 when Nike launched the “Jordan Generation” basketball shoes, and some retailers began selling the sneakers at a higher price. The sneaker craze created opportunities for a new generation of speculators. Many young flippers treat shoes as an investable asset similar to commodities. Sneaker resellers, like day traders on Reddit, use community and technology to exploit a system that is not adequately guarded against them.
There are many such examples.
In September 2017, Nike’s brand Air Jordan cooperated with the trendy brand OFF-WHITE to release a sneaker called OFFWHITE·Air Jordan 1.
The original selling price of this pair of shoes was 1,499 yuan per pair. It was not long before it was sold to 12,000 yuan, and the white, black and red AJ1 was sold in just a short time. Within two years, the price soared to 70,000 yuan, an increase of 45 times!
With such a huge price difference, naturally some people make a lot of money.
As long as there are popular limited edition shoes or co-branded shoes on sale, scalpers will be waiting for the opportunity to target certain best-selling colors and shoe sizes (men’s sizes 40-45). shoes, women’s shoes in sizes 36-38), shop like crazy.
2 The “boss” of the shoe industry has been named many times
Dewu APP, formerly known as DuAPP was incubated internally by Hupu in 2015. Qixinbao data shows that its investors include Hupu, Price Capital and DST. According to China Times, one year after transforming from an online sneaker trading function to a sneaker trading platform in 2017, the total monthly GMV turnover of Dewu has reached nearly 200 million yuan, and it has achieved a record of 2 billion to 3 billion yuan that year. By 2019, the company’s annual GMV will reach 6 billion to 7 billion yuan.
The development of Dewu APP from the niche sneaker market to becoming the largest discussion and trading platform for domestic trendy shoes is inseparable from the shoe boom in the past few years. There is a popular saying in 2018: middle-aged people speculate in stocks, while young people speculate in shoes. After changing its name in early 2020, Dewu began to focus on all trend categories and further expanded in terms of categories and models. But the main consumer target is still young people.
Dewu also claims to create the largest artificial intelligence identification scene in Asia and even the world, but it has also been criticized for issues such as identification and after-sales.
On June 29, 2020, the China Consumers Association released a public opinion analysis report on 618 consumer rights protection, which specifically mentioned Dewu. During the monitoring period, a total of 8,735 related articles were found. Negative information mainly involves counterfeiting, appraisal fees, coupons and other issues. At that time, the topic “China Consumers Association Dianmingdewu APP” on Weibo had 120 million views, and the issue of counterfeit and shoddy products attracted the most attention among netizens.
Earlier in October 2019, after several months of craziness in the shoe speculation market, the Shanghai Branch of the Central Bank issued an article “Beware of the “Shoe Speculation” Craze and Prevent Financial Risks” pointing out that domestic sneakers were resold. There is a craze for shoe speculation. The shoe speculation platform is actually a fancy capital game. More than 10 shoe speculation platforms have been criticized by name. At that time, Poison APP, which had not yet been renamed Dewu, ranked first.
Image source: Beijing Daily WeChat
A month later, Dewu released the “Shoe Wear” “No speculation” initiative calls for industry self-discipline.
At the end of 2020, Dewu extended its tentacles to the financial field. According to China Times, some industry insiders have noticed that its main operating company has launched an exclusive installment product “Jiawu Installment” and is recruiting talents in supply chain finance, financial payment and other related fields.
Qixinbao data shows that Shanghai Shizhuang Information Technology Co., Ltd., the main company of Dewu APP, applied for multiple financial property management trademarks in 2020, including Jiawu Installment, Liuliuhua, small things installment, good things flowers, etc. Judging from the application details, the uses of these trademarks include payment of installment loans, electronic transfers, credit services, etc.
3 There are risks in following the trend of “shoe speculation”
Behind the shoe speculation craze, it reflects In recent years, sports brands have used co-branding to create buzz.
Co-branded products are one of the most dynamic trend-setting methods and most successful marketing methods in this century. They not only make the brand a lot of money, but also make the American StockX , GOAT, Chinese sneaker resale platforms such as Dewu and Nice, their valuations have soared in recent years, and they are becoming or have already become unicorns.
When the profit plate of co-branded sneakers is large enough, even sneaker replica factories will come in to get a piece of the pie. Recently, the Yangzhou police cracked a related case of counterfeiting and counterfeiting.
According to the Jiangsu TV Public News Channel, Xiao Zhang from Yangzhou wanted to make some money by “speculating on shoes”. A while ago, he spent more than 80,000 yuan to buy 24 pairs of popular shoes, only to find that he had been cheated. Judging from the video screenshots, this shoe is the 2019 version of Adidas YEEZY Boost 350 V2.
The victim Xiao Zhang said: “At that time, that shoe had just come out and was quite popular on the Internet, so I bought a total of 24 pairs from him. Each pair cost 3,200 yuan. The total cost is more than 82,000 yuan. He told me that these shoes were purchased from Hong Kong and were genuine, which reassured me.”
It is understood that this popular shoe is genuine The official price is around 1,800 yuan. At present, a pair has been sold for more than 3,000 yuan on the market, and it is still hard to find a pair. Xiao Zhangpan still has room for growth on this basis. So, I sent messages everywhere and spent a lot of money to find sources of goods. Soon, a netizen named “Ye Liangxin” contacted him and said that he had genuine and good products. If you grab it, you will earn it. Xiao Zhang pays quickly. But when the goods arrived, he discovered that he had been cheated.
Xiao Zhang said: “We usually play with shoes. This shoe looked fake at first glance, so I communicated and negotiated with him. Who knew that this person would treat me like Blocked me and ignored me.”
After receiving the report from Xiao Zhang, the police quickly identified the true identity of “Ye Liangxin”. It was discovered that his surname was Yu and he worked as a security guard in Shenzhen. Behind him was a counterfeit selling network.
Police from the Public Security Brigade of Yangzhou City Hanjiang Public Security Bureau said: “It was discovered that Yu’s superiors and superiors are all in Putian and specialize in selling fake shoes.”
After careful investigation, the police closed the net at the same time in Putian, Shenzhen, Dongguan and other places, and arrested the suspects one by one. In this operation, the police arrested a total of 9 suspects, removed 2 warehouses where fake shoes were stored, and seized more than 400 pairs of fake shoes. During the interrogation, Yu confessed that after receiving Xiao Zhang’s order, he bought 24 pairs of fake shoes from the factory in Putian, intending to pass the fake shoes off as the real ones and make money. It is understood that the actual unit price of Yu’s goods was 100 yuan, but when he sold it to Xiao Zhang, it was more than 30 times higher.
This time, after receiving an order from Xiao Zhang, he bought 24 pairs of fake shoes from a factory in Putian, intending to pass them off as genuine and make money. It is understood that the actual unit price of Yu’s goods was 100 yuan, but when he sold it to Xiao Zhang, it was more than 30 times higher. </p
